"The director, Nick Cassavetes, called me to meet him at his house," Gosling tells the British magazine Company. "When I got there, he was standing in his back yard, and he looked at me and said, 'I want you to play this role because you're not like the other young actors out there in Hollywood. You're not handsome, you're not cool, you're just a regular guy who looks a bit nuts."

It was watching the small screen that inspired him to go Hollywood. "Then, one day, I saw Raquel Welch on 'The Muppet Show.' She was dancing with this big furry spider and I immediately fell in love. She was the first crush I ever had, and I thought, 'How do I get to meet this woman?' And then I thought, 'Well, she's on TV, so to meet her I have to get on TV myself."